Campbell’s Soup: Ode to Food

Students produce narrative illustrations and writings in the poetic form of an ode after discussing a quote by Andy Warhol and viewing his Campbell’s Soup Can artworks. Students explore the concept of liking something so much that one is compelled to create art about that thing.

Grades:

1-12

Subjects:

Art, English, Language Arts, Creative Writing

Suggested Time Frame:

1 class period

Objectives:

Students will explain and discuss an Ode

Students will discuss repetition

Students will articulate and illustrate food preferences

Students will compare and contrast student work

Students will assess the effects of repetition in daily life (art, music, food)

About the Art:

Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can paintings are key works of the 1960s Pop Art movement, a time when many artists made work derived from popular culture. Warhol's soup cans raise the simply popular or everyday to the status of art. Campbell's and its red and white label date from the late nineteenth century, and became more and more familiar in the twentieth, particularly with the increase in mass production and advertising after World War II. Warhol himself said, "Pop art is about liking things," and claimed that he ate Campbell's soup every day for 20 years. For him, it was the quintessential American product: he marveled that the soup always tasted the same, like Coca-Cola, whether consumed by prince or pauper.

Andy Warhol Quote:

“I used to drink it [Campbell’s Soup]. I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.”

Andy Warhol

Points of View:

The Campbell's Soup Can series makes me laugh. In this particular piece I want to know whom the brat was that ripped the label. The simplicity of Warhol's work frustrates me. The Campbell's Soup Can painting conjures up the same emotions as a paper clip or a post-it note: "Why didn't I think of that?" Lifting a soup can up to the level of art doesn't put Warhol in league with Raphael, but it does show some Thomas Edison-style ingenuity. The Campbell's series confirms that if Warhol had but one virtue it was awareness. We are all bombarded by popular culture and Warhol was able to recognize that overwhelming influence. He took a soup can, an image recognized by all, and elevated it to the level of art. I'd call him the All-American artist because he made his medium accessible to people of every class and race. The bright color and provocatively bland subject of the Campbell’s series make room for disagreement among the College educated as much as high school dropouts.

Soup as the humble meal celebrated by Daumier; soup as the melting pot in an increasingly homogenized America; soup as transition from homemade to pre-prepared item; soup as "good" or "bad" taste, both on the tongue, and as advertising design. Peeling back the label to reveal a generic shape of the machine age generates food for thought: who tracked its route down the assembly line? Who are the tastemakers who determined the flavors of its contents, defining good and bad in terms of sales potential? What were the mechanisms involved in its delivery? Why would Warhol claim that he ate it every day?

I've always found it tremendous fun to strip the label off a can - an act of violent, seductive denuding. Deprived of its paper vestment, a can is anonymous, cold, and eternal as a Greek temple's column. The lacerations in the label are like St. Sebastian's wounds - sadomasochistically homoerotic. The unpeeling paper also resembles a spool of 16mm film, the strip of curvy celluloid loosening from its reel.

Lessons from The Andy Warhol Museum have been mapped to National Visual Arts Standards, 21st Century Standards and Pennsylvania Visual Arts Standards. Click an achieved standard to read more and see other lessons. View all standards here.